Are you ready to give up caffeine for 40 days? What about your social media accounts? While giving up those things may seem hard for you, Christians long ago used to give up a whole lot more. Ash Wednesday is today. It marks the first day of Lent in Western churches. The ashes symbolize penance…… MORE
The science is looking pretty unanimous on this one: Drivers of expensive cars are the worst. A new study has found that drivers of flashy vehicles are less likely to stop and allow pedestrians to cross the road — with the likelihood they’ll slow down decreasing by 3% for every extra $1,000 that their vehicle…… MORE
Seagulls prefer to eat food that humans have already touched, according to new research. Scientists from the University of Exeter in the UK showed herring gulls two identical pieces of food, and noticed the birds were more likely to eat the one that they had seen a human holding. This suggests that gulls’ decisions on…… MORE
The two young women took a brief pause from advocating for the environment and human rights to meet for the very first time. To no one’s surprise, they were fast friends. Greta Thunberg visited Malala Yousafzai at the University of Oxford, where the Pakistani activist is a senior. Thunberg is in the UK for a…… MORE
She may just have won the Geneva Summit 2020 International Women’s Prize but Iranian activist Shaparak Shajarizadeh says she can’t feel happiness anymore — not while her friends and other women’s rights activists remain imprisoned in Iran. “I’m not a happy person and I feel guilty all the time,” she told CNN in a candid…… MORE
Forgive Vladimir Putin a wry smile. Just one report that Russia is meddling again in US elections has pitched Washington into a meltdown that will only further the Kremlin’s goal of tarnishing US democracy. Bombshell reports last week revealed that US intelligence agencies identified a new Russian election interference effort — and suggested the Kremlin…… MORE
Fidel Castro is back. From beyond the grave, the socialist icon who faced down Uncle Sam for 50 years is casting his spell over yet another US election campaign. Front-running Democrat Bernie Sanders, author of his own, milder leftist revolution, refused to fully repudiate past praise of the Cuban dictator in a “60 Minutes” interview…… MORE
About 74,000 years ago, Sumatra’s Mount Toba experienced a super-eruption — an event scientists suspect was large enough to wipe out a majority of early humans living at the time, slowing down the spread of humanity. But researchers have discovered evidence that Homo sapiens were migrating before, during and after the event, according to a…… MORE
Today is Shrove Tuesday. Also known as Fat Tuesday, Mardi Gras (in French) and by many other nicknames. It’s the big hurrah before Christians start Lent, a season of prayer, penance and fasting in preparation for the Easter season. But even on a day with king cake, beads, parades and giant floats, there’s still a…… MORE
Space weather has more implications than causing glitches in Earth’s satellite-based communications — it can also strand gray whales, according to a new study. Typically, space weather is created when solar storms occur on the sun and stream out toward Earth. The high-energy particles can disrupt our communications and Earth’s magnetic field. But they may…… MORE
